Today we’d like to introduce you to Nathan Williams.
Hi Nathan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
River Town Adventures started as a small kayak and canoe company 13 years ago. We started with eight kayaks and six canoes and just with the dream of changing the perspective that people had on the river here in Lansing, Michigan. The rivers were kind of an ignored part of the city for a long time. It’s an industrial city, and there was trash and litter and a bunch of things in the river. My business partner and I took it upon ourselves to change the perception that the rivers in Lansing had, the Grand River and the Red Cedar. We dedicated the first number of years to river cleanups, and we still do this, but getting all the old trash from long ago out of the river.
We didn’t know how it was going to start. We didn’t know if it was going to be a success or a failure, but I was determined to give it a shot and give it a couple of years to see if we could put a business together. Luckily, it got popular, and we grew very, very fast. At our peak, we were up around 150 boats, and then, through just a few things that happened in the world and a few local political issues, the big issue was COVID. COVID was a very large hit to the business at first and was a real struggle, but we’ve made it through the other side and we’re still kicking and really starting to hit that growth phase again and rebuild. We’re still very committed to the river, but we’re recommitting ourselves to the river again this year and really have a big coalition of people that we’ve gathered over the years to help improve the health of the river and the beauty of the river itself.
Before I started the business, I was a municipal employee for the local municipality of East Lansing, Michigan. I worked in the water department, and I worked for the city of East Lansing for 13 years. It was a great job, and I had all the benefits in the world and safety and security, but I had always wanted to start a business. My dad had recently passed away, and I was in this moment, in this mindset of really that life was short. You just have to go for it and take some chances and see what happens. That little decision has wildly changed my life over the last 13 years now. It’s led me all over the world with this business, but also with my skills that I picked up from kayaking and guiding people and interacting with nature.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not a smooth road or calm waters, if you will. The first thing I learned real quick when I started the business: you think you start a business because you can own stuff and you get all this free time and all this money, and I learned that you don’t. Your business owns you.
This small little seasonal kayak operation turned into an overwhelming full-time job. You learn that there’s a lot more to business than just putting people out on a river and giving people a good time. There’s:
– Management
– Accounting
– Marketing
– Taxes
– Finances
– Boat repairs
– Municipal governments that you’re dealing with, state governments, regulatory bodies, all sorts of different things, insurance
It’s been a fun adventure. You learn a lot as a small business owner and learn about networking and personal relationships and business relationships and mixing of all that. It’s been a tough road, but it’s been very much worth it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Well, I’ve been able to kind of weave together a very interesting lifestyle and life from this business. It’s a seasonal business, so it runs over the summers, and from this, after about five years of running it, I got a chance to go up to Alaska as a sea kayak guide. At that point, I had never seen a whale, I had never seen a glacier, and I had barely ever even been in the ocean. I had just done local kayaking around Michigan.
I took this opportunity, had no idea what I was getting into, and I got a chance to be a glacier and marine wildlife guide in Seward, Alaska. That totally changed my life again. I realized Alaska was one of the most beautiful places on Earth and just truly your outdoorsman’s paradise. I still go back there every year for a part of the summer and guide in various different factions. I’ve worked on small ships in Alaska and Southeast. I’ve worked on the train in mainland Alaska, going up to Denali. I’ve worked on land as the kayak guide and hiking guide in Alaska, and then that led to learning about Antarctica. Even then i didn’t understand the magnificence of Antarctica but i got to learning a whole lot more about Antarctica and now have been an Antarctic Expedition Guide for the last 4 years.
I got a chance to work on expedition ships and become part of the expedition team for seaborne cruise lines in Antarctica, and then they’ve taken me all around the world, from working the Antarctic to the Amazon to Africa to Europe, Iceland, Greenland, the Arctic, the Canadian Arctic, the Northwest Passage. I work with them in Alaska as well, and I’ve circumnavigated the globe basically with them. That affords me time off to then run this business over the summer, and I can still get a chance to travel and also be part of the paddling and kayaking community locally as well.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Well, I’m number one. My family has always been the biggest support and encourager of me and all of my crazy ideas. Then my business partner Paul has been able to deal with the operational side of the business, since I’m not around all the time and I mainly focus on the online marketing outreach, anything you can do from a computer, the finances, everything. It wouldn’t work if he wasn’t around, as unable to be the operations manager.
Then my biggest mentor, as far as business-wise, I would have to say would be Jim Rohn. He actually died before I ever met him, but I found him online when I was still working for the city. I found some speeches by him on YouTube, and at the time I was walking around people’s yards reading water meters. I just download things from the internet and listen to him all day. I found this Jim Rohn “Best Life Ever” video, a four-hour-long video, and I had no idea what I was downloading. Within a couple of minutes of listening to it, I realized that I had found something very unique and special. His big thing is talking about your philosophy and how your philosophy is what drives your results in life, and it just really hit me. I just started listening to Jim Rohn every day, over and over and over again, the same exact four-hour speech. I just wanted that man’s philosophy and his principles in my head, in my mind, so I basically just dedicated myself to listening to him and learning from him constantly for a couple of years before I got the chance to really put it together and start this business.
Off the top of my head, those would be the big ones, but then there have been a lot of friends and business friends and people in our business network that have just been huge supporters and mentors to the business. People that have been in business longer than us have given us just great opportunities to learn from them, but also grow with them.
Pricing:
- Single Kayak ~ $10/hr
- Adventure Trips ~ $25-40
- Kayak Lessons ~ $60/hr
- Tshirts ~ $20
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rivertownadventures.com
- Instagram: @rivertownadventures
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/rivertownmi
